Archive for August, 2005

Kindergarten began this week and I’m hoping that it means I have more time to spend building my company. So far, it has meant more trips to Target and bigger piles on my desk. My life is changing and I’m anxious to see how it changes my work. My schedule is in a state of [...]

A week ago I posted a blog about an entrepreneur who appeared on the August 20 radio show, Emily Blumenthal, and how she was passionate in getting her product on QVC. I wrote, "You gotta’ be bold and sometimes you gotta’ be aggressive." Well, that’s not the entire message. On this weekend’s radio show, a [...]

It’s 25 minutes until StartupNation Radio hits the airwaves for this week’s show. We’ll be broadcasting all over the country and the phone lines will jam up within minutes once the show begins. But right now it’s just Heather Cohen, our star associate producer and myself with our engineer Paul Roy in the studio. The [...]

Starting a business has never been easier. The internet allows you to reach a global market and setting up a business in your home is an extremely popular way to test the waters in the evenings & on weekends. Before I joined the StartupNation team in early 2004 I ran a home based recruiting business [...]

One of my favorite “start your own business stories” is of Brandi Ramos in southern Illinois. An army veteran, single mom with an autistic son, Brandi was motivated to start an eBay business so that she could earn a living while spending time at home with her son. But what to sell? She simply started [...]

I think I can safely mark in my calendar that yesterday I became an official member of the Sandwich Generation. My son started kindergarten and while he was there, my sister called from the hospital to say my Mother’s doctor thinks we should consider a nursing home for both of my parents. To boot, kindergarten [...]

I was always told that once you leave a company to work for a competitor, you can’t return. Have times changed? A couple years ago, a friend quit his job to work for the competition. Within a week, he was back at his original job. The first job paid less, but the new company was [...]

Everyone says they want the big order. But beyond all the techniques and tricks of the trade you’ve heard about how to crank up your sales, here’s an ever-looming challenge entrepreneurs have to deal with: Would you take an order–sell, basically–a product or service only once it’s clearly developed, locked, loaded, and ready to go? [...]

This past weekend’s StartupNation radio show featured an interview with entrepreneur Emily Blumenthal of Yasmena. She tells the story of how she got her product to be featured on QVC. She saw her opportunity and literally knocked people out of her way to make it happen. You can listen to the story here – it’s [...]

Many people possess an undying entrepreneurial spirit, even if they aren’t officially in business. The night before trash day, I encountered a man surveying my trash–specifically an old sliding screen door we discarded. “Do you mind?” he asked. Of course I didn’t, but I was curious about when he planned to do with it. “Scrap [...]

Continuing on the theme of throwing scenarios at you that you respond to, here’s one that we (as business owners) have to be ready for…because it could happen when we least expect it… — One of your key employees walks in to have a private talk with you. He has a serious situation he’s dealing [...]

It’s grey today in Michigan – someone owes me big for taking away a sunny summer day. In honor of a somewhat dour Sunday, I wanted to share a a somewhat dour (but hopefully moving) message once told to me by a bright young venture capitalist: an idea entitles you to very little. Here are [...]

It occurs to me that most of the success I have had in life has been in spite of any discipline or focus on tasks. This is beginning to create problems at my new company, and I am determined to fix it. Not only does Charisma Sciences have our coaching service, but we are also [...]

We’ve been to some real doozies of business lunch meetings…including some awkward situations where we had to make on-the-spot judgement calls on what was appropriate to do. Just to make sure we’re acting appropriately, we thought we’d tap your thoughts about proper etiquette during a business lunch. Here’s a typical scenario: Harry calls you at [...]

An entrepreneur named "Matt S." contacted us this week. He’s looking for help. Here was his initial email to us (via our “CONTACT” link at StartupNation.com): Hi– I’m desperate to launch a couple e-business ideas, but need a more tech-savvy partner. Would you have a resource for finding business partners? Love the website, by the [...]

We owe a BIG thanks to the people who stepped up last week as volunteers to test drive our soon-to-be-released "10 Steps to Start Up" online process. You know who you are–BRAVO!!! We’ll be working with you closely in the weeks ahead. When the 10-Step program is released on StartupNation.com, we’re planning to list out [...]